06 May 2016

Europe's
environmental and human rights activists have taken strong exception to the
continent's shipowners visiting Alang on a promotional tour, but regretted,
representatives of non-government organizations (NGOs) were "denied
access" despite a promise earlier.

Patrizia Heidegger,
Executive Director, NGO Shipbreaking Platform, Brussels, has said in a
statement that the European ship owners, government representatives of France,
Germany and Belgium, and the European Commission were to visit the Alang
shipbreaking yards.

Yet, Heidegger
added, "Despite several indications that NGOs, including the NGO
Shipbreaking Platform, would be part of the delegation, no NGO was invited to
join in the end."

“We were clearly
not welcome to join this visit. Critical civil society voices are not wanted in
Alang – neither by ship owners, nor by the yards – this confirms the lack of
transparency under which the yards in Alang operate,” said Heidegger.

The delegation
visiting Alang had, in its itenirary, showed that it would have no meeting with
trade union representatives or workers, and would only visit a selection of
very few yards.

The visit is
organised by industry association ECSA (European Community Shipowners’
Association) that represents the interests of European ship owners.

:It is an attempt
by both ship owners and certain yards in India to convince European policy
makers that yards in Alang should be approved for the upcoming EU list of
accepted ship recycling facilities", Heidegger said.

"However",
the NGO top representative added, "Under the European Ship Recycling
Regulation and the recently published technical guidelines on the requirements
for ship recycling facilities, it is clear that beaching facilities do not
qualify for the European Union list."

Heidegger claimed,
"Local environmental groups have raised several concerns related to the
deplorable working conditions, poor downstream waste management and continued
pollution of the coastal waters in Alang."

“We share the
Gujarat-based NGOs’ concerns and demand that European ship owners do not settle
for double standards", Heidegger said, adding, "European ship owners
should only use facilities that operate at a level which is accepted in the
European Union. The low-cost method of beaching will not feature on the
European Union list.”

The visit was
organized around the time when ship recycling activities at Alang, situated in
Gujarat’s Bhavnagar district, have picked pace in the last three months.

Between January and
March, say reports, a total of 120 old ships beached there — nearly 80 per cent
more than the number of ships that visited the yard during the same period in
2015.

“In the last three
months of the previous financial year, we have seen a lot of activities. The
number of ships that visited Alang during this period is almost the total
number of vessels beached here during the first three quarters of 2015-16,”
captain Sudhir Chadha, port officer at Alang, has been quoted at saying.

Only 129 ships
beached at Alang for recycling between April 2015 and December 2015, when the
business witnessed one of the worst slumps. From January to March 2015, only 67
vessels had come to the yard.

However, another
calculation said that business at Alang had still not become normal, with just
only 249 ships reaching the yard during 2015-16 — an eight-year low. Such lows
were seen only during the 2006-07 slowdown, when 136 ships visited Alang.

Meanwhile, the
shipbreakers at Alang blamed the “poor performance” on the Baltic Dry Index —
which measures the rates paid to hire ships of different sizes to transport dry
bulk commodities.The Baltic Dry Index hit an all-time low in February this
year.

The freight market
was down, and so it was becoming unviable for ship owners to hold onto their
old ships or operate them. Such ships were easily available in the
international markets at affordable rates to shipbreakers.

However, at Alang,
the ship breakers complained, they were still struggling. The steel prices
continued to remain low, and the infrastructure and real-estate sector continue
to underperform.

The worst months of
2015-16 were October and August when only four and nine ships, respectively,
came to be broken. The best month has been February 2016, when 50 ships
arrived.